Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 2 - Stellium in Scorpio (18 page)

"Longer
than you've been alive," I said, not being particularly interested in
young people.

"So
how long have you and Callie been together?"

"I
just met Callie a couple of months ago."

"Omigosh!
So, you're just now...getting together?" She squealed like a teenage girl.

"Getting
together?" I asked, to torture her into having to say what she meant.

"You
know.. .you're just now..." she said, and I gave her a direct and blank
stare. "Well..
.dating,"
she said with quick word replacement.
"What's it like exactly?"

I
didn't reply but ordered Callie a Coke and got Rose's bourbon and Seven, an old
oilman's drink, and I wondered if she'd picked up the habit from her father.

"What's
dating like?" I finally repeated, teasing her with my tone. She lowered
her gaze in slight embarrassment, not at all the confident, arrogant young
woman who'd easily accepted Callie's compliment in the greenroom.

"Dating
Callie is the sexiest thing on the
planet."

Rose
let her breath out, collected herself, and then followed me back in the
direction of the ballroom like a puppy.

"So
who are you
dating?"
I asked, giving the word her emphasis.

"I
don't know," she answered obliquely.

"You
don't
know,
which means you're dating
someone,
but you're
confused about who he—or she—is? Does that mean you're dating a drag
queen?"

"No!"
The look on Rose's face said she was truly shocked, and I laughed at her
uneasiness, remembering what it was like to be in my early twenties and totally
inept at answering the questions of women nearly twice my age. However, in
fairness to me, Rose would have to learn not to start things she couldn't
finish.

"So,
is it Sophia?" I turned and looked directly at her. She reddened.

"No!
Of course not," she nearly shouted at me.

You've
had each other so many times mentally that the rest is just detail,
I thought but instead replied, "Too bad."

It
was while we were away that Callie saw the tall female dancer from the
Boy
Review
whom she and I would discuss after the party. The dancer was wearing
tight black leggings, black fur balls dangling from her Russian-style boots,
her colorful shirt bloused at the sleeve and cut low on her chest. Her waxen
hair, black as coal, was combed flat to her head, giving the impression that
the head was all of one molded piece like a porcelain doll. She turned
gracefully on one foot to leave the room, lost her balance, and fell—her head
cracking against the terrazzo, blood spilling from her skull. Callie let out a
small yelp and ran to her side. The other people in the room were seemingly
oblivious to the poor woman's plight. Callie looked up at the older man
standing nearby to ask for his help, then caught his placid expression and
stopped herself. Instead she ran through the dining hall and found me. In an
urgent whisper she said, "Teague, a woman has fallen on the terrazzo and
her head is split open. She may be dead. Come and help me quickly!"

"I'll
get Giovanni," I said, but she held me by the arm.

"No,
I want you to come help her." Callie pulled me with her. We scurried
through the dining room and back to the ballroom, where people were milling
about laughing and drinking.

"Where
is she?" I asked.

Callie's
body sagged up against me as if to say it was exactly as she'd suspected.
"She was right there." Callie pointed at a pristine area of the
terrazzo floor. "Right there."

"So
she was moved?"

"I
don't know. I don't know," she said, shaking her head, and yet, I sensed
that Callie Rivers did know. The pieces of whatever was happening were beginning
to take shape in her mind—pieces that might frighten me if she spoke them out
loud.

Callie
said very little on the drive home. No amount of coaxing on my part was going
to get it out of her. Whatever she thought she saw at the party either didn't
happen or it happened in the same way it happened in the bathtub in our room. I
decided just to give her some space. I opened the moonroof so we could see the
bright stars against the dark desert sky, and I turned on the radio. It was a
country song about somebody who thought they were picking up a hitchhiker, and
he turned out to be the ghost of a famous country singer.

"Everything's
a sign," Callie said, and receded back into her own private world.

What
would living with Callie Rivers be like?
I thought.
Sometimes she 'd be present, and sometimes she 'd be out
in the ether and I'd be with her, but alone.
I reached over and took her
hand, content to have something to hold on to until she came back.

She
was silent as I pulled up to the valet parking stand, and the plumed boy asked
how our evening was. I refrained from saying, "It was just swell: hookers,
hoods, and homicide." Instead I settled for the Midwestern version and
muttered, "Fine, thanks."

We
rode up in the elevators in silence. After unlocking our bedroom door, I
quietly hooked up Elmo and left the hotel room to walk him, leaving Callie to
her thoughts. When we returned fifteen minutes later, she'd fallen into bed and
was asleep before I'd even had a chance to brush my teeth. Apparently flying
around outside her body took its toll. As I leaned over to kiss her good night,
she murmured in a half sleep, "Don't leave the bed in the morning, I do
want you."

"I'm
not the one who leaves," I reminded her, and she smiled.

"Can
you tell me more about what you saw?"

"Just
a woman in an exotic Russian costume. She slipped, she fell, she died, she
disappeared."

It
was evident that she knew nothing more and didn't want to dwell on it.

With
the first rays of morning sunshine, I awoke to Callie's kissing my neck and
unbuttoning my nightshirt. I moaned into awareness, loving that the first thing
I was feeling as I awoke was her nude body pressed against mine.

"You
are so sensual. I'm so glad the planets have aligned to bring you to my bed.
Although, since they're aligned exactly as they were twenty years ago, I would
still like to have had you then," I said. My remark made Callie pause and
then look up at the ceiling for a long moment. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"What
you said about the planets aligning just as they did twenty years ago. It's
made me think about something related to the chart." She jumped out of bed
and headed for her computer, locating the scrap of astrological paper bearing
the Stellium in Scorpio. "The ghoul pool always takes place on Halloween.
This chart was created on Halloween. That's one thing he's trying to tell me.
Mo must have had this chart on his mind when he died, because it just has his
presence. Whatever happened on this most recent Halloween at the ghoul pool
gathering is what brought the energy of this hotel's natal chart back. You see,
it's a retrieval of energy from the Halloween Eve in which the groundbreaking
occurred. Sun, Moon, Uranus, Venus, Mercury, and Mars, all lined up like little
soldiers."

"Come
back to bed. I am so sorry I mentioned the damned planets. Get over here,
please!"

"Don't
curse the planets." Callie stood up at her computer, too excited to sit.
"A Stellium is the conjunction of three or more planets in the same sign
of the zodiac. In this instance, if we want to be liberal about our orbs and
allow ten degrees, one could say there's a double Stellium: Sun, Moon, and
Uranus within eight degrees of each other, all in Scorpio in the Eighth House,
and Venus, Mercury, and Mars all within ten degrees Scorpio in the Eighth as
well. The Eighth House is just packed! Every aspect, every sign, every planet,
every asteroid has a positive and negative energy attached to it. We use it for
either good or evil, depending upon our own will. Scorpio in the Eighth House
is inherently intense, secretive, sexual, power seeking. The Eighth House
relates to many issues, including reincarnation, death and dying, and other
people's money."

"Sounds
terrible."

"It's
all in how you use it. Someone with that aspect in their natal chart could use
the energy positively to become a powerful surgeon specializing in
reconstructive surgery, or on the negative side, he or she could be a murderer.
You see, two ways to use a knife. Positively, one could be a brilliant forensic
detective; negatively, the same person could be a sexual predator. Again, two
ways to use the power of tracking an individual. Positively, a power seeker in
the sense that he marries or becomes the head of state; negatively, that same
person could be a power seeker in the sense that he corrupts the head of state.
You see how that works?"

"So
who makes the choice—that person or the cosmos?"

"Another
question becomes, when are the choices made: before you ever arrive on Earth or
as you live each day?" Callie smiled, enjoying our being able to share a
conversation like this.

"So
someone who knew Mo Black and the story about this chart is passing us the word
that something dark and Plutonian is going on in his hotel right now, or that
the old darkness is about to be brought to light—or both?" I asked.

"Exactly.
We know Rose is on the ghoul pool list, but we don't know why. We know Mo Black
was on the list at one time. Karla mentioned that. It's possible that he was on
the list right around the time the young boy was killed. Then Mo died as well.
Maybe Mo was on the list as a warning to be silent regarding the boy
prostitution ring, and he ignored the warning and he and the boy were both
murdered— the boy first to make Mo suffer, and then Mo. And if I'm right about
the retrieval of energy, Rose is on the list as a warning to be silent, and if
she's not, maybe someone else dies along with her. Retrieval of energy, a
present-day event mirroring the past. But usually you go back to retrieve
energy in order to change it and correct it." Callie took a deep breath.

"Let's
hope so," I said.

Callie
threw her head back, and I could see the elegant lines that made up her neck
and the exquisite structure of her cheekbones and her nose, Greco-Roman carved
and perfectly sculpted.

"In
the Eighth House Stellium, Venus is involved. It sits right in the middle. So
there is a woman in the middle of this, and Venus is Retrograde so the woman is
going back. Back where? Back to do what? Look at this." She picked up a
book from her suitcase that contained something called Sabian Symbols. She
explained that every single degree through which a planet can pass has a
particular meaning.

"Venus
is at 19 degrees and 6 minutes in this chart. If you consult that symbol, it
says something like an exotic bird hearing and then talking. Now I know that's
strange and makes no sense, but I've come to realize that there is sense there.
I simply can't decipher it right now."

I
was totally worn out from the conversation, the kind of fatigue that comes from
concentrating intensely on trying to understand someone talking to me in a
foreign language.

I
turned on the TV to catch the morning news, accepting that our time in bed together
had been waylaid by the cosmos. As the picture came into view, the reporter
announced, "Investigators were at the home of a well-known Las Vegas
showman, Johnathon Burr, known in Las Vegas show circles as Joanie Burr, who
died late last night. Mr. Burr came home from his late-night second performance
and apparently slipped on his back patio, falling to his death." The news
broadcast cut to performance photos of Joanie Burr in costume wearing black
tights, Russian boots, and the blousy shirt Callie described.

"That's
the woman who died on the terrazzo floor at Giovanni's home. She's the drag
queen, Joanie Burr!" Callie shouted.

"So
she died twice? Once at Gio's party and once at her own home?" I asked,
totally confused.

"No,
her face was different at the party, but it was Joanie," Callie said.

"I'm
lost." I shook my head in frustration.

"The
woman who died on the terrazzo floor at the party was the drag queen Joanie
Burr, who died last night at her home, and they showed her on TV just now, but
at Giovanni's house, her body and her clothing matched the clothing Joanie was
wearing on TV. Her face was a woman's face because she was dressed in costume,
but it was almost like the face of the man in the bathtub."

"Well,
that clears things up," I said, trying to be funny, but Callie was
obviously too upset to laugh. "It's weird that twenty-four hours ago, we
asked if Joanie Burr would talk to us, and now she's dead. Is she dead because
of that very thing?" I asked.

"Rose
is the only one who knew we wanted to talk to Joanie, but I don't think she
would ever have anything to do with her death. In fact, if your palm imprint is
correct, she could be next," Callie said.

"Let's
go talk to her," I replied.

I
gave Elmo a quick hug goodbye and Callie and I headed downstairs, past the
ringing slot machines, under the celestially lit domed ceiling, beyond the
ever-hot buffet and the ticket information booth, and down the long corridor
and into the darkened theater, backstage, and up the staircase to the greenroom
where we found Rose Ross sitting alone sobbing. She said she never even got to
ask Joanie if she'd talk to us. She died too suddenly. Still, something didn't
feel right. With everyone in this hotel seeming to know our every thought and deed,
maybe someone did know we wanted to question Joanie Burr.